For the Love of Film: The Film Preservation Blogathon III

What is this?

I am proud to take part in this year's For the Love of Film: The Film Preservation Blogathon. What that means is they=we=you are gonna be raising funds for the National Film Preservation Foundation's (NFPF) project, The White Shadow this week.

The White Shadow is a 1923 film "officially" directed by Graham Cutts but was the first film to be written and assistant-directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Long considered lost, the first three reels were discovered in a collection of unidentified American nitrate prints that had been safeguarded at a New Zealand archive since 1989. You can read more about the discovery of the film here.

From Ferdy on Film: "The good people at NFPF are committed to making many of the films they have rescued available for cost-free viewing by streaming them on their website. But online hosting ain’t cheap. NFPF estimates that it will cost $15,000 to stream The White Shadow for four months and record the score. It is the mission of this year’s For the Love of Film Blogathon to raise that money so that anyone with access to a computer can watch this amazing early film that offered Hitchcock a chance to learn his craft, with a score that does it justice."

The goal, as mentioned, is to raise $15,000 to stream this three-reel fragment online, free to all... and to record the score by composer Michael Mortilla.

Just click the image above and you can donate. Thanks!

Now.... As part of the Blogathon, all the participants (over 100 film blogs!) are offering posts on Sir Alfred. So, if you CLICK HERE, you'll be offered a choice of not one, but THREE! Hitchcock posts I've done (The Lady Vanishes, North by Northwest & The Birds), each with a tantalizing recipe to cook which will enhance your viewing pleasure. (Actually, you can read all three - it's more of a buffet than a single prix fixe thang.)

As Sir Alfred once said: “I'm not a heavy eater. I'm just heavy, and I eat.”

For other bloggers involved in the Blogathon this week - for those added Monday & Tuesday visit HERE, for those added today & tomorrow - click here.

As always, cook, watch, eat & enjoy!

the story so far..... (updated)

A year ago, because I was getting a little attention thanks to an article in USA Today, I decided that six months into this adventure I should write something for people coming to this site for the first time. And now I've decided to update that post.

If you walk up to a stranger, pretty much anywhere in the world, and ask them two questions: “Do you like food?” and “Do you like movies?” The majority of them would answer yes to both. Eating and watching movies have a lot in common. Maybe that’s why they go so well together. No matter where in the world you find a movie theater, there's someone selling some kind of food to munch on when the lights go down. And there's nothing like snuggling up with a good movie and a home-cooked meal. This is the basic concept of Chef du Cinema – pairing great movies with great food.

one reason I love living in austin....

For those of you who don't live in Austin, I feel your pain. I fear going to movies anywhere outside of my zip code as a lovely couple just over a decade ago began with a small theater showing movies they love, serving food at that theater, and offering good times for movie lovers. The only rule they had was "to keep your big mouth shut during the movie." Eventually that rule evolved to including people who can't seem to understand that talking on your cell phone during a movie makes you an a$$hole. And finally, adding texting to that.

Our story so far.....

If this is your first time here, let me welcome you.

If you've been here before, you're probably asking: "why is he writing this?"

What's going on is, first off - I'm on a trip to Southeast Asia, and second off - USA Today telephoned a week before I left asking if I could put together three recipes based on three of the ten (I'm sorry, but how lame is it that they went from five to ten?) Best Picture Oscar nominees for an article which is appearing sometime in the next 24 hours from now. And so I thought I should write something and get it ready to post since I'm not going to have great Internet access nor will I have time to write much right when this thing hits the newstands. Why do I care? Because I'd like to give some new folks who might be arriving based on that article, a quick summary of what the heck this is that I'm doing so you won't have to weed through all my ramblings to figure it out.

So... Our story so far.

movies I will not do classes on.... part deux

Right from the beginning, I decided there were films that were just too obvious to be included in my adventure. I listed them here. Now check out this new book which was unleashed last month and compare the list of movies they DID do to my list in that post. Sure these guys got a book, but I'm sticking by my premise of avoiding such movies -- Because if it's too easy, then I'm bored. And you don't want me to be bored, now do you?

Cooking Session with Classic Movie Stars....

just a bit of YouTube fluff featuring clips from old movies (featuring both hepburns) showing off their skills (or lack their of) in the kitchen. cute. Thank my new friends at FilmFood for discovering it.

movies I will not do classes on....

When I first conceived this idea, I decided that there were certain movies -- let's call them "obvious" -- which I just would not do a class on. not that they're bad movies, it's just that they are, you know, "obvious."

Then this morning I spied @ food buzz a link to this woman's blog and her list of her "top 10 food movies." I clicked over and it was like she had organized a list of my "don't do" movies. And so I'm reproducing that list for future reference.